Mario Barnes and Courtney Cahill
IRVINE, Calif. (May 13, 2024) — Mario Barnes and Courtney Cahill have been appointed Chancellor’s Professors of Law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. Chancellor’s Professors are endowed positions awarded to faculty who have demonstrated unusual academic merit and who are highly likely to continue producing notable achievement in scholarship.
“Mario Barnes and Courtney Cahill’s appointments as Chancellor’s Professors of Law underscore their outstanding scholarly contributions and commitment to advancing equality,” said UC Irvine School of Law Dean and Chancellor’s Professor of Law Austen Parrish. “Their expertise, leadership and dedication as educators enrich our academic community, reflecting our core values of academic excellence and inclusivity. We look forward to their continued impact in legal scholarship and beyond.”
More About Mario Barnes
Professor Mario Barnes is a nationally recognized scholar for his research on the legal and social implications of race and gender, primarily in the areas of employment, education, criminal and military law. He is one of the leaders and organizers within the school of academics seeking to build stronger connections between empirical studies and Critical Race Theory. He writes and teaches in the areas of criminal law, constitutional law, national security law, and race and the law. Prof. Barnes returned to UC Irvine School of Law in spring 2022 after serving as the Toni Rembe Dean and Professor of Law at the University of Washington School of Law from 2018 to 2021.
At UC Irvine School of Law, Prof. Barnes taught the inaugural class in 2009 and was instrumental in developing the Law School’s curriculum and sense of community. Additionally, he served as the second senior associate dean for academic affairs, the first associate dean for faculty development and research, and helped launch the Center on Law, Equality and Race (CLEAR). Before joining UC Irvine School of Law, he was a faculty member at the University of Miami School of Law; prior to that, he was a William H. Hastie Fellow at the University of Wisconsin School of Law.
Before entering academia, Prof. Barnes spent 12 years on active duty in the U.S. Navy, including service as a prosecutor, defense counsel, special assistant U.S. attorney, and on the commission that investigated the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. He retired from the Navy in 2013, after 23 years of combined active and reserve service.
Prof. Barnes earned both a bachelor’s degree (1990) and a J.D. from UC Berkeley (1995), and an LL.M. from the University of Wisconsin (2004). He was founder, Managing Editor and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the African-American Law & Policy Report (now Berkeley Journal of African-American Law and Policy).
Prof. Barnes is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, an elected member of the American Law Institute, and a Distinguished Fellow of the National Institute of Military Justice. He received the AALS Ferguson Award in 2015 and was honored with the AALS Derrick A. Bell Jr. Award in 2008. In 2023, he, along with his UCI Law colleague, Professor Kaaryn Gustafson, received the American Bar Foundation Fellows Outstanding Scholar Award, given for those who have engaged in outstanding scholarship in the law or in government.
More About Courtney Cahill
Professor Courtney Cahill is a leading scholar of constitutional law, anti-discrimination law, sex equality, and LGBTQ equality. Interdisciplinary in scope, Prof. Cahill’s scholarship looks at the mutually constitutive relationship between sex equality and LGBTQ equality, as well as at the role that disgust plays in shaping regressive laws against women, sexual minorities, and non-traditional relationships and practices, including alternative reproduction.
Prof. Cahill is a two-time Dukeminier Award winner for her scholarship addressing LGBTQ rights. She has published in the Yale Law Journal, Harvard Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Minnesota Law Review, and North Carolina Law Review, among other journals.
Prof. Cahill earned a J.D. from Yale Law School (2001), a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature with a concentration in Italian from Princeton University (1999), and a B.A. in Classics and English Literature from Barnard College (1993). At Princeton, Prof. Cahill was a graduate fellow in the University Center for Human Values and a Fulbright fellow at the University of Florence and the Dante Society. While at Yale, she was the Chief Essays Editor for the Yale Law Journal, a Coker Fellow, and the recipient of the Colby Townsend Memorial Prize.
Prof. Cahill is the author of a forthcoming book entitled, “Busted: Policing Women on Top.” “Busted” surfaces the vast (and largely invisible) network of laws and social norms that discipline girls and women for being topless, sometimes in the home. Using five decades of criminal topless prosecutions as a window into the strategies on which the law relies to justify sexism and enforce regressive gender norms, “Busted” establishes a through-line from policing women from the waist up to policing women from the waist down, especially in a post-Dobbs world.
“It is an honor to be part of the stimulating and forward-thinking intellectual and teaching community at UC Irvine,” said Professor Cahill. “I’m truly humbled to become a Chancellor’s Professor at this special institution.”
About the University of California, Irvine School of Law
The University of California, Irvine School of Law is a visionary law school that provides an innovative and comprehensive curriculum, prioritizes public service, and demonstrates a commitment to equity within the legal profession. Nearly half of all UCI Law’s J.D. graduates are people of color, and almost a third are first-generation students. At UCI Law, we are driven to improve our local, national, and global communities by grappling with important issues as scholars, as practitioners, and as teachers who are preparing the next generation of leaders. The collaborative and interdisciplinary community at UCI Law includes extraordinary students, world-renowned faculty, dedicated staff, engaged alumni, and enthusiastic supporters. Connect with us on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and sign up for our monthly newsletter for the latest news and events at UCI Law.